Summer break was much needed. Two years ago at this time, I was running on all cylinders — full speed ahead into the unknown. Last summer, I was recovering. I was adapting to life after a traumatic spring, and when life stopped, I took time to watch everyone’s ways of dealing with life, listened to advice (discarding bad advice and adopting everything that I thought worked). It was in that summer that I made several startling discoveries: 1) People think things are crazy when they don’t understand them. 2) People deal with pain in different ways. 3) I adapt quicker than most people, but live my life mostly in my thoughts, and don’t vocalize them unless I need something cleared up. When life gets hard or something unexpected happens, I tend to think negatively and go into a downward spiral until something or someone breaks me out of it. This spiral ended this summer. That’s right, fifteen months of a downward spiral — stuck in my own head –little-to-no sleep — reviewing the traumatic experience on repeat — thinking it was my fault, if I acted another way, or did this instead, everything would still be okay — stressful day-to-day learning in grad school compounding the issue because I have no time to decompress and forgive.

Let’s put it this way: I was 100% two summers ago. Last summer, I was probably at 10%, burnt out physically and emotionally. This summer, after a month and a half of good living, I’m efficiently back in the 70% or 80% area. By the end of the summer I could very likely back up to 100%, but over the last year of school, I could probably be burnt out to about 50%… I know most people don’t picture themselves as a human lithium battery that needs to be recharged over long periods of time… but it helps me guard against unwanted stress, and not to overextend myself. Everyone always wants a part of you, and if you give too much of yourself, you’ll have nothing left. It’s a sad truth.

I will also be updating this blog more (but not sure for how long, maybe for a year, maybe just until I don’t need to anymore). This is because during my free time, I’ve been doing some amateur psychology research. I was talking to a college student, and she said she just changed from being a psych major — and that when she first meets people she automatically types them as one of the four types of people. Apparently, I am a B/A mix (sometimes called the melancholic type). This interested me because I didn’t know about psychology. I immediately did my own research on personality types and traits, quickly finding the Myers Briggs personality types. There are 16 types, and my type, the INTJ, is very rare, comprising 1% of the population. I found an INTJ forum, and quickly discovered there are people who think like me. The many explanations of the type fit me perfectly. and I found a website that explained how INTJ could attain immense personal growth. One of these tactics was to write my ideas and not have them bottled up in my head, rattling around and causing confusion. In effect, meeting someone and talking about types of people really broke me out of the worst funk of my life (even worse than when my aunt died during college).